Episode 17 of Hooked on Creek features my interview with Scott Allshouse. Scott played drums in Max Creek from 1996 to 2012.
In this interview, Scott talks about how he joined Max Creek, his memories playing and touring with the band, his role co-producing the album Spring Water and his experience working with Scott Murawski on the Scottness album Stormfield.
This episode features the songs The Bug, Summer Sun and Can’t Let Go performed live by Max Creek at the Karma Club in Boston, Massachusetts, back on May 10, 2000.
Episode 17 transcription
You’re listening to Hooked on Creek, a podcast celebrating the music, history and fans of the legendary jam band Max Creek. I am your host, Korre Johnson, and you are listening to episode 17.
Thank you for tuning in to episode 17 of Hooked on Creek. This episode features my interview with Scott Allshouse. Scott played drums in Max Creek from 1996 to 2012. In this episode, you will hear Scott talk about how he joined Max Creek, his memories of playing with the other members of the band, what it was like touring with Max Creek and his role co-producing the album Spring Water. Scott also talks about working with Scott Murawski on his Scottness album Stormfield. All that, and a lot of great music is packed into this episode, so stick around after the interview to hear a few tunes from this era of the band.
In the show notes, you can find direct links to stream or download the music featured in this episode, or simply head over to hookedoncreek.com where you can also find a full transcription of my interview with Scott. And while you are there, click the contact link and let me know what you think. I am always looking for recommendations on topics to cover or Max Creek shows to feature in this podcast. Alright, now let’s get started.
Korre: Scott Allshouse, welcome to Hooked on Creek.
Scott: Thanks for having me, Korre.
Korre: Scott, you played drums in Max Creek from 1996 to 2012. But prior to joining the band, I’m curious, were you familiar with their music?
Scott: I was. I was a fan of theirs from early high school, late middle school. I had known of them and I used to go see them basically as soon as I got my license and I was able to drive, I went to some outdoor festival shows that they had in western Massachusetts, a place called Bucksteep Manor. And another great place that used to be around called Woody’s Roadhouse. And just loved it. I fell in love with the band way back when, and I was a fan. I used to go see them with my buddies in high school.
Korre: So where were you in 1996 when you got that invitation to join the band? What were you doing?
Scott: I had just finished Berkeley College of Music. I was there from ’92 to ’96. And, I was really looking to be an audio engineer, is wanted to do. That’s what I was doing throughout high school and college. I was working and interning for different live sound companies and I wanted to pursue that, either be it live engineering or studio engineering, something of that nature. Just out of college trying to figure out what my next steps were.
Korre: Can you describe how you got the invitation to join the band? Do you remember how that felt at the time?
Scott: Yeah. It was not an invitation. I sought it out, but I didn’t realize what I was seeking out would be a drummer seat. See, I had heard a rumor that they were looking for a sound man and I had met Mark Mercier years before in high school at a sound company in New Britain, Connecticut, that he was working at. I think he did clerical work in the office, as far as I knew. Forgive me if I’m wrong, Mark. And, I remember going there as a young high school kid, as an intern, and I walked in and here’s Mark Mercier with an electric piano in his office. And I was kind of awestruck because I was a fan and had no idea he was there.
So anyway, he knew of me just from that, barely. So I heard they were looking for a sound guy and I found Mark’s phone number through someone. Called him, said, “Hey, you might remember me as this kid working with you and I heard Creek is looking for a sound guy.” And he’s like, “No, actually we’re not. We’re looking for a drummer.” And I said, “Jeez, well that’s even better. Would I be able to try out?” He like, “Well, yeah, I guess. Send us some tapes and we’ll take a listen and then we’ll take it from there.” So, I think I sent him my audition tape that I had for Berkeley, so that’s four years old already, but it’s something I had and I sent it to him. And they gave me the opportunity to play.
At that time they had no drummer. Vasso had left and they were basically auditioning drummers at shows. It was at the Living Room in Providence, Rhode Island, was the first invite I got to come up. They said, “Come up, you’ll sit in for a couple songs and we’ll see how it goes.” And I went there and the drummer of the night was Eamon Cronin, who is a great drummer and a great vocalist. And he’s actually a singer for a band Riders on the Storm, who’s a great Doors cover band. So he’s auditioning.
I show up with a bunch of my friends. And after this, I go backstage at set break and they’re like, “Yeah, you’re gonna start the second set.” And I went up there. I felt really awkward because I was playing someone else’s drums who was auditioning. And I mean, to this day I think it’s kind of weird. I feel bad, you know, for Eamon. This is kind of strange, man, having to go up on someone else’s kit that’s trying to get the gig, too. Anyway, I go up and I played I think two or three songs to start to set. It felt great right from the start. I’m sure I overplayed, but I was young and I got off stage and at the end of the show, the guys in the band were like, “That was great. That’s great, great, great.” I got compliments from everyone, so I was feeling really good and I went back home and they had many other drummers. I think they had four drummers at that time that were kind of circling through, auditioning.
So it went on for a month or two after that. And I played a full show in New York state. I think it was a four- or five-hour set. It was crazy. So, they really threw me into the fire. And after that they made a decision and I got chosen. So, I was super excited and that set me up for what I was going to do now in 1996 from then on for a while.
Korre: What were your first impressions of the different members of the band at that time?
Scott: They were all very nice and welcoming to me. Now I was 22, maybe 23 — much younger than them obviously. I had never been in that world of being backstage and they had many fans, and they took to me, too. The fans were just hoping for them to find a good drummer and move on. They were kind of getting tired of seeing different drummers and during that time they would do these mini Creek gigs without a drummer and just maybe Rob would play percussion only. They were really searching to solidify again and have that sound.
But the guys in the band were really accommodating from the start. I fell right into it, fit right in. I felt really comfortable playing with them. I loved the music, like I said, since high school — although I did need to learn a lot of songs I didn’t know. It felt great and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the relationships with the guys on and off stage. All of them. They’re great.
Korre: Now, I am going to take brief break from my interview with Scott Allshouse so I can play a clip of Mark Mercier talking about Scott contributions to the band during Scott’s final performance with Max Creek back on May 19, 2012, at The Old Well in Simsbury, Connecticut. “I just got to say, really quick. It’s funny how this whole thing transpired because we thought we were looking for a sound man at one point. And Scott said. “I’m a sound man.” And by then we were looking for a drummer. And he said, “Well, I’m a drummer.” And the rest is history. And the interesting thing is he wasn’t born when we started. But he is a really old soul and he just fit right in, like a hand in a glove.”
Korre: When you were growing up, were you exposed to a lot of music? What was your upbringing like from that perspective?
Scott: I had a musical family, like once removed. My grandfathers were both musical. On my mother’s side, my grandfather was a guitar player, singer. He had a bluegrass band called The Rocky Mountaineers I didn’t really know about growing up, but he always had instruments in his house. I knew that much. And he gave me a snare drum when I was just a little kid. And, my other grandfather played like dobro steel guitar and sang — not professionally to any of my knowledge. But my mother was a piano player and a painter. My father was more of an engineer. He was not artistic. So my mother’s side grandfather got me into music and my mom.
Ever since I was little, I would take Kleenex boxes and rip the Kleenex out, put them around and play them with pencil sticks. My mother has pots and pans, that I think she still saved, that have dings in them because I would take them and put them upside down and beat them with spoons. So it was definitely in me, and with the help of my grandfather giving me a drum and then my mother and father nurturing it and just letting me go with it — and started paying for lessons when I was younger. I was definitely a drummer from the beginning and I took to it.
Once I got a drum set when I was 12, I think 12 is when I got my first real drum set — and would just play in the basement. I remember the first few things I would play to where like Boston albums and Steve Miller Band, because I liked the music and I could grasp it and play it. So I would sit down there, I had a little PA system around the drum set and I would play through those albums, when I was young. That’s where it all started.
Korre: Now, as I understand it, a drummer and a bassist traditionally form that rhythm section of a band. So I am kind of curious, how you were able to develop your relationship with John Rider to make that rhythm section work? What was your relationship like with him on stage when you’re performing?
Scott: John’s a unique bass player, like nobody else I ever played with prior or since. A lot of drums and bass, the kick drum and bass lines are locked together — not with him, not at all. As a drummer, it’s almost, you lay it down and he plays around it a little bit and it sound like Max Creek. We’ve had occasions over the years where someone else had to fill in for John. It’s very rare, but he wasn’t able to make a few shows. Although we’d bring in these bass players that were fantastic, it changed and it sounded more like — it didn’t sound like Max Creek.
He’s got a unique way of playing that I can’t even explain, but it’s different than anybody else I’ve ever played with, in a good way. And it’s what makes Max Creek sound like Max Creek. I do play more off of Scott probably, than anyone, rhythmically. He’s a really good rhythm guitar player. He just has got a very percussive rhythm. He’s really got a great pocket. So, I would lock with him and almost more than John. John just goes along and does his thing. And like I said, he’s unique in the way he plays. But I feel like I locked rhythmically more with guitar than with bass in that band.
Korre: Well, one of the things I love about Max Creek is their ability to improvise and transform familiar songs into unique creations of art. What was it like to be part of that creative process and why do you think it works so well for Max Creek?
Scott: I think their songwriting is unique and very good. Their songs — their original songs — grabbed me when I was young in high school as fantastic. I didn’t know if they were theirs or not. I thought most of the stuff was theirs because they do do a lot of remakes and covers that I didn’t even realize were covers. But their original stuff is so well written, that it’s a joy to play over and over and over again. It never gets old. And they don’t play everything the same every night anyway, which makes it fun. You know, there’s never the same — never the same solos of course, but sometimes different tempos, even a different feel. You might take on a different feel of a song purposely just to mix it up. Or a lot of times we start a song, go into others, come back to it. Finish it an hour later or in a different set or even a different night.
Their original music — obviously it’s stood the test of time. That’s why people keep going to see them. That’s my belief. They’re all great players, but I think the tie that binds that band is the good original writing.
Korre: How did the band typically approach setlists? Were the songs performed on any given night pretty well defined by the band ahead of time?
Scott: No. Almost never. Never. The loose rule was that since all three guys write their own tunes or they’re known for their own — even if they’re covers, that’s their cover — the loose rule was that it would kind of rotate between Scott, Mark, John. Not in that particular order. But if a John song started, it would just move to. And that was still a loose rule. Sometimes that would not apply. The main thing that the band tried to do consciously was not stop playing. So weave one song into another was something that was important and challenging, but that’s what would lead to these great extended jams at the end of songs. And someone would just hear just the slightest tinge of a melody for a different tune or a tempo. Or I might get sick of it and not hear anything being built after a while and I would just interject what I thought should be the next tune rhythmically and it might go there.
But that’s basically the building blocks to a Max Creek show in my era there, where there was no setlist written. The few occasions were I think a couple Camp Creeks where we had a lot of guests sitting in. We did have some setlists, rough setlists, so they knew when they were going to have to come up and perform because we had many guests coming. But moreover, it was just no setlists. That was the M.O.
Korre: Max Creek released the album Spring Water in 1998 and their Live at the Connecticut Expo Center album in 2000 and I see you are listed as a co-producer on both albums. What role did you have in co-producing these albums?
Scott: Spring Water, I had much more of a role in, as I remember. We recorded that over a couple of nights at the Webster Theater in Hartford, Connecticut, which was a place we played, in my tenure there, quite a bit. It was a big room. It was popular, but it was a horrible sounding room. I believe it was an old movie theater, but all concrete. So not the best acoustic environment. Toni Fishman, I believe, hooked us up with some recording equipment to track. And then we did that on ADATs.
And I was doing live sound throughout my career with the band, sporadically, so I thought I had an ear for it. And we hired this guy to mix Spring Water, a mix engineer named Earl Cohen was his name, and he had some pretty top name acts that he mixed. So we went to the studio with our tracks in Suffern, New York. It was called Beartracks. It was a beautiful studio to mix in. And I went along with the tracks and with Earl and I was basically producing there and helping mix and get the sounds right.
And I did all the editing too, because those songs on that were longer than what they are. I had to cut solos, make some executive decisions to get those into some kind of format that people would — we were hoping maybe they would get some radio play back then. But you know, taking a 15-minute song and making a 9-minute song out of it, that kind of thing. But yeah. Spring Water was great. I don’t really love the way it sounds now. I listened to it. It’s a little harsh, but I think that was a lot having to do with the ADATS and the capture of it digitally, back then, was not as warm as what you can do nowadays. That’s a great album. I look back at it and I wish it was mixed a little differently, but I had a big part in that. I went to that studio a lot doing the mix downs and overdubs.
The Live at the Connecticut Expo, I don’t recall doing much with that one. I think that was kind of thrown together just to get something out there and people wanted some content. That album I don’t have as much recollection as I did for Spring Water.
Korre: You also played drums on Scott Murawski’s solo album Stormfield that he recorded under the name Scottness. How did that come about?
Scott: Scott asked me if I would be interested in going to Pennsylvania to record with him for a week and he had some original things that he did not perform with Creek at the time. He had some demos of them that he had made and he played them for me. I said, “Yeah, this is really good. I’d love to go do this.” So he had a friend, Peter and Fred who are still good friends of his today and mine, as well, and they lived down in Pennsylvania. We rented a bunch of equipment. We rented some ADATS and a mixing board and microphones and some minor outboard gear — some reverbs and compressors and such. We went down there and turned the basement.
We brought my drum set down and put my drums, his guitars rig down there. And in the living room, we set up our control room and recorded and it was him and I, and we would record drums and guitar for the song first on all these tracks. And then, we’d go upstairs and play them back and he would lay down bass and some keyboards and vocals. And we had a blast.
And just him and I just went through the week and we mixed them down. We did a rough mix in the living room, there. I did the rough mix and we had it on DAT and I took it back. I had it in my house — I had an apartment up in Granby, Connecticut, where I still live now. This is in fall of 1999. We were hoping to get it mixed down and really take it somewhere and have those multitracks mixed. So I had the master DATs, someone else had masters though, Scott did as well. But I had the master ADATS at my house — that was the thing. I had the master ADATS and we had a fire in our apartment on Christmas Eve, 1999. My wife and I luckily were not there. We were in New Jersey visiting her family, but the apartment burnt to the ground and we lost all that.
So the multitracks were gone. And all we had was the rough mix that we had done in Pennsylvania on this little rental TASCAM console. And we said, “Well, it’s either this or nothing.” You know, all that time and effort and so much fun went into it. And so Scott sent it off to get it mastered, best it could, and put it out. I know you said you haven’t had a chance to have a copy of that album, but if we can ever get one to you, the cover of it is multitrack tapes on fire. That’s basically the cover art for that album. So, we had a great time making it. It’s unfortunate it couldn’t get mixed properly because it’s my mix — rough mix, but it sounds pretty good actually for a rough mix. And it’s out there and it was a fun experience with Scott and I’m glad I was a part of that.
Korre: And so over the 16 years you were in the band, of course you played with Rob Fried and you also had the opportunity to play with Greg Vasso. Can you take a minute and describe what it was like to play with Rob?
Scott: Yeah, Rob was awesome. I’d never seen so much stuff when I first joined the band. And on stage, his percussion setup was enormous — so many toys and different sounds. The first time I started playing with the band, and all these little things I would hear him doing, that I had heard as a fan listening to in the audience, were great — just being next to him to hear him doing this stuff. By that time, he wasn’t playing drum set anymore. It was just percussion rig.
I loved it. He was a trip, man. He was really funny and totally into drums. His house was so full of instruments. So many drums, it was like a museum. I’d go in there and you just want to grab a pair of sticks and play your way around his house was basically what it was like. It was really awesome. He was a lot of fun and he added a lot to that band and he is sorely missed.
Greg Vasso, when Rob had left — there was certainly no replacing Rob at that point — we were like, yeah, we can’t. It’d be sacrilegious to hire another percussionist. But the band was lacking. It sounded lacking a little bit with just me playing back there. I missed it. So, we decided to have Vasso come back when he could and do double drums. And also it helped because I was taking on a little more work doing live sound. So the shows that I had to miss, Vasso would fill in. When he was available he would do that for me. But double drums with Vasso.
Double drums is a hard thing to do well and to not make it sound bombastic back there. And he was really easy to play with. He’s really gracious. Someone has to take the lead. Someone has to sit back. If you have two leaders back there, it’s sounds horrible. It’s just too much. The idea is to compliment and be like a percussionist. And he took that role on most of the tunes when we did double drums and he added textures and fills that were really cool.
And, he’s got a unique way of playing. Again, like I said John Rider has a unique way of bass playing. Vasso’s drumming is cool. He’ll do fills, cymbal crashes, when I would have never ever thought they would be appropriate, but they’re perfect — and they’re Vasso. And I hear them and I can pick him out. Like I’ll be hearing shows on Archive or something and I don’t even know if it’s him or I sometimes for the first few minutes. And then I’ll hear a solo or a fill and I’m like, “Oh yeah, that wasn’t me. I must’ve been working because that was Vasso, for sure.” But I had a great time playing with him. I miss playing with him and I miss playing with Rob. Yeah, it was great.
Korre: And so over those 16 years, did you get a sense that the band had a clear direction on where they wanted to take the band as far as how many shows they were going to do a week, or to what extent they were going to be touring or how much promotion they wanted to get? And did that change over time, over those 16 years?
Scott: A little bit. I think when I joined the band, they had a pretty good schedule going. I would say three weekends a month, if not four. And Wednesdays during the week, we’d go up I think to the Living Room and do these Walk on the Wild Side Wednesdays. It slowed a little bit after I joined because the guys in the band started having their children. About the time I joined the band, they had young kids. So it slowed a little bit and that’s why I probably took on a little more audio engineering work on the side during maybe the first seven years of the band. And then, as their kids got older and they had more time to go back and play a little more, I started having young children and I got tied to home a little more.
So I got pulled back, where that’s the part where Vasso came in to help me out with a young family. Mark, John and Scott, their kids were all now getting much older. So it was this pull at different times in different directions that changed the schedule of the band. That’s how it kind of went during my tenure there. It was kind of driven, I think, by families and children, more than jobs.
Korre: When you look back at those 16 years, is there a specific memory or a show or something that stands out as really a highlight for you?
Scott: I have favorite venues that I love to play. One of my favorites — while we’re recording, they’re playing there tonight, as we’re recording this. I know this is not live, but they’re probably in a car right now heading off to Rochester to play Water Street Music Hall. That was one of my favorite venues. The fan base out in western New York is awesome. They’re really friendly. I made a lot of good friends out there in the Rochester-Syracuse area. Still to this day, they’re friends of mine. They’re extreme Max Creek fans out there. It’s intense. So, that was one of my favorite places.
Camp Creeks were always fun. That was a special time, having a whole weekend — camping and camaraderie and sit-ins and all that. Those were great. Gathering of the Vibes were another big festival that we used to do that were in different locations, but that kind of settled to be down in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on the water for a bunch of years, and got to see some great other acts that were part of those bills. That was a favorite stage of mine to play.
And then the last one, there’s many, but one more would be we did a short tour of northern California and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco was very fun to play. It was nice to see our name on the marquee out there. That was cool.
Korre: How did the band come to that decision to travel all the way out to the West coast? Was that a hard decision?
Scott: No, it’s where the hippies are. We would go out to Colorado. We’d fly to Colorado and then do maybe six days in Colorado and then we did this stint — another six days or seven days out in northern California and it was met with pretty great success. Those shows were awesome and they were well attended. It’s a shame we couldn’t go out there and do that more.
Korre: Max Creek is coming up on their 50th anniversary, which is incredible. And that’s a testament not only to the band but also to the fans of their music. Why do you think fans of Max Creek have such an enduring interest in their music?
Scott: I think it’s accessible enough. Because the band never has made it huge. So they’re big enough for the excitement and the production value — that you get a good show, you get a good sound, you get good lights. But it’s intimate enough always that you feel like you’re part of the family. I mean, the fans really do create the show. The energy that they show gets bounced right back. Rarely are there duds because the fans are always there and they’re always attentive. They make the shows. So the fan base and I think just the unique position of the size of venues that they’ve played throughout their career make it special.
Korre: I’m curious what you’re up to nowadays. Do you still have a connection to the music industry?
Scott: I’d say so. I mean, I’m a full-time audio engineer. I’m a freelancer. I travel these days maybe 130, 150 days a year on the road doing live sound for mostly large-scale corporate destination events. I do some broadcast work, as well. I do live sports for television. But most of the time I’m traveling doing these large corporate events. While not as creative as mixing live music, although on occasion there are bands involved. The last one I just did had these great cellists that won America’s Got Talent or they were on America’s Got Talent. These cello players, they were fantastic. So I do get to dip my hand in music and I try to play here and there. I’d like to play a little more, but my career is certainly in the entertainment industry still, just not on the stage. Supporting the stage, now.
Korre: But every once in a while, you get an invitation to come back and sit in with Max Creek. What’s that like?
Scott: Oh, it’s like just jumping right back an easy chair. It’s a lot of fun. I’ll go see them whenever I can. I’ll go pop in and they’re always accommodating, saying, “Come on up and play.” Love it. Bill and Jay are fantastic. They’ve really filled the seats well. I love the way the band sounds with them.
Bill Carbone is a fantastic drummer, a humanitarian. He is just a standup dude and they’re lucky to have him in the seat, I’ll tell you that. So he’s really gracious with his time. Whenever I go see them, he just says, “Just stay up here, play.” “Nope,” I said. “Do you want to sit back down” “Nope. Just play. You’re having fun.” So yeah, I love it. And it’ll never get old. It’s just like riding a bike. You just sit right back down. And although my chops aren’t what they used to be, or my endurance might not be, but it doesn’t matter. It’s just so much fun to play with them.
Korre: Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you think fans might want to know about you or your experience in Max Creek?
Scott: There’s one thing they could look out for. I did this kind of like a jazz album back in the midst of my Max Creek days with a great bunch of musicians that might be out there to find it. The band was called Mystery Feet and the album is called Walk the Walk. And it was this bass player friend of mine, Craig Garfinkel, who’s a great bassist, who’d just put together a band. And originally he wanted to go into the studio and it was in Toni Fishman’s first recording studio, which he had out of his home before he had created Telefunken.
And Craig wanted to record basically to showcase his bass playing. And it turned into us just writing songs in the studio enough to make a whole album. And it was Craig Garfinkel, Frank Varela and Jonathan Chatfield and myself. And then Larry Coryell, who was a great jazz guitarist, came and guest played on one of the tracks. So it’s a cool album that I did that was out of my comfort zone — trying to play jazz. And although it’s not the best, it’s certainly something to look out for and have a listen because the other players are smoking on it. So that’s something. I think you could probably find it on the internet, still.
Korre: That sounds really cool. I’m gonna go check it out for sure. Scott Allshouse, thank you so much for joining me on Hooked on Creek and for sharing your memories of playing in Max Creek. I really appreciate it.
Scott: And thanks for having me, Korre. It was a pleasure. And thanks for everything you’re doing to keep people abreast of the band. I think it’s awesome.
And that concludes my interview with Scott Allshouse. But don’t go anywhere because now I am going to play a couple songs featuring Scott on drums that I think you are really going to enjoy. During the introduction to this episode, you heard Scott Allshouse singing The Bug during Max Creek performance back on May 10, 2000, at the Karma Club in Boston, Massachusetts. Of course, The Bug is a song written by Mark Knopfler and recorded by Dire Straits on their 1992 album On Every Street. Since that May 10, 2000, Max Creek show is such a hot one, I am going to play a couple more tunes from that show. First up, you are going to hear Summer Sun and that will be followed by Can’t Let Go, which is a cover of a song written by Randy Weeks but first released by Lucinda Williams on her 1998 album Car Wheels on the Gravel Road.
This is Max Creek performing live on May 10, 2000, at the Karma Club in Boston, Massachusetts.
And that concludes episode 17 of Hooked on Creek. I am very grateful for the opportunity Scott Allshouse gave me to talk to him about his experiences in Max Creek and hope you enjoyed our conversation and the music I picked for this episode. If you have feedback about this episode or suggestions for future episodes of Hooked on Creek, visit hookedoncreek.com and click the contact link to send me a message. And you are always welcome to join the Hooked on Creek community on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for tuning in.